“Chuchu, another glass please.”
“Huh? Oh! Right away!” Chen Sichu, who had clearly been lost in thought, jumped up from the sofa the moment she heard Luo Ming’s voice and went off to make him some brown sugar water.
“Wen-jie, are you feeling better?” Chen Junmiao asked with concern.
Luo Ming nodded, thinking to himself: “Guess I can’t just keep lying around forever! The brown sugar water actually helps quite a bit.”
“Wen-jie, there’s something else I need to bring up.”
“Go ahead.”
Chen Junmiao took a moment to gather her thoughts, then said: “Wen-jie, it’s like this — there’s a World Cup next year, right? As usual, the organizers are holding a global search for the theme song, and our company wants to submit a song too.”
Luo Ming’s expression turned a little odd at that.
Was the World Cup theme song in this world chosen through a global submission process?
Seeing Lin Shuwen’s expression, Chen Junmiao assumed she also thought the company’s decision was ridiculous. She said with a helpless look, “Wen-jie, do you also think our company is just asking for humiliation?”
Luo Ming nodded along with Chen Junmiao’s words.
“That’s what I thought too. But it’s not just our company — every entertainment company in the country wants a piece of an event like this. Whether we get selected is one thing; whether we participate at all is another.”
“Good grief, this is literally ‘the taking part that counts’! So what’s the company’s stance?”
“The company wants Teacher Huang to write the song. Teacher Huang refused without even thinking about it, and then said something pretty shocking.”
Luo Ming’s interest was instantly piqued. “What did Old Huang say?”
“Teacher Huang said that Huaxia’s music industry is deformed and disconnected from the rest of the world. Even if we participate, it’s a waste of effort. He’d rather spend that time drinking tea and going fishing for some peace and quiet.”
“Wow! Old Huang really has the guts to say that!” Luo Ming couldn’t help but exclaim.
“Tell me about it! Manager Zhu’s face was as dark as the bottom of a pot. To get everyone to produce a song, he straight-up offered a million-yuan bounty — anyone who can deliver a suitable entry song gets a direct reward of one million from the company. Then he announced the meeting was over and left.”
Luo Ming curled his lip dismissively, thinking: “A World Cup theme song is only worth a million?”
But then he reconsidered — Huayue putting up a million was probably just to buy a song they could submit. They weren’t expecting it to actually get selected.
At that thought, Luo Ming couldn’t help but rant: “To be fair, Old Huang isn’t wrong. A country’s music scene being dominated by sappy ballads for decades — that’s extremely rare anywhere in the world.
From the ’70s and ’80s all the way to now, fifty or sixty years of the same guitar-and-piano intro, drums kicking in at the chorus, the same 6-4-1-5 and 4-5-3-6-2-5-1 progressions carrying most of the Chinese music scene — of course it’s disconnected from the world.”
“Wen-jie, my dear sister, please stop talking!” Chen Junmiao was startled, practically about to cover Luo Ming’s mouth.
“I’m just telling the truth. We’re at my place, no need to worry about walls having ears. Besides, it’s just the two of us here — what’s there to be afraid of?”
Chen Junmiao thought about it and agreed, so she perked up her ears, curious to hear what else Wen-jie had to say.
“Because the music is so lackluster, the domestic audience’s taste has degraded along with it. Anyone who’s listened to a decent amount of music would’ve gotten sick of this monotonous melodic style long ago. Anyone who’s studied music theory and analyzed the charts would realize that the popular songs in China just recycle the same few notes over and over. Some top-tier domestic musicians even sample and plagiarize when composing.”
Chen Junmiao was so stunned by “Lin Shuwen’s” bold claims that she couldn’t speak.
But Luo Ming wasn’t even finished — what he was describing was actually the music scene from his previous life.
The Chinese music market had the worst copyright protection among the world’s eight major music markets — basically nonexistent.
How did those copycats on NetEase and Douyin get famous over the past decade? Plagiarism wasn’t even considered a big deal in China.
“The Golden Melody Awards” are the highest-standard music awards in the country, right? A copycat won four of them.
In an environment like that, what new artist would be willing to write songs properly? Discover talent? Talent would rather go work in a factory.
A music scene with no creative drive isn’t deformed — it’s dead.
But in this timeline, copyright protection was actually decent, and the Golden Melody Awards were run seriously. That was one area where things were better than his previous life.
“Wen-jie, you absolutely cannot let anyone hear you say these things.”
“Relax, I’m not stupid.”
“So, Wen-jie, are you going to try for that million?”
“No. I’m not short on money anymore. Luo Ming’s game sold like crazy — nearly 1.2 million copies domestically and internationally combined in less than a week. The domestic sales are tax-exempt, Steam takes 30%, so net profit comes to about 80 million. I can already retire.”
“80 million! That much!” Chen Sichu, who had just walked over with the brown sugar water, nearly fainted at the astronomical figure.
It had only been a few days! The company Wen-jie invested in had already made 80 million! Was Wen-jie some kind of investment genius?
“Calm down, this is just the beginning. In 2014, Plants vs. Zombies will sell at least 2 million copies domestically, and I’d estimate 5 million overseas.
According to Luo Ming’s calculations, this year’s Plants vs. Zombies revenue should be around 600 million yuan.”
“Hiss—” This time even the usually composed Chen Junmiao couldn’t help but gasp.
600 million! That was truly an astronomical figure!
“Wen-jie, what’s CEO Luo going to do with all that money?”
“Him? First thing is to build his own servers.”
“Servers? You mean computers?” Chen Junmiao asked curiously.
“Yes, you can think of them as super huge computers.”
“Super huge computers? Like a supercomputer?”
“Oho! Chuchu, you know what a supercomputer is!” Luo Ming asked with a hint of teasing.
“Wen-jie, you underestimate me too much. I’m not an idiot.”
“Unfortunately, you’re wrong though. Supercomputers and servers aren’t the same thing. In terms of construction principles, there’s not much difference between them — what sets them apart is the core CPU and their purpose. Servers generally provide specific services, and their memory might even be larger than a small supercomputer’s. Supercomputers, on the other hand, are compute-intensive applications where CPU performance is paramount.”
“Uh… I didn’t understand any of that.”
Luo Ming just smiled and didn’t bother explaining further.
According to his plan, after the New Year, Zhuoguang would purchase its own servers. They’d buy a plot of land near the Fen River in Bingzhou and build a data center there, using the river water for server cooling.
As for who to buy servers from, Luo Ming wanted to ask Professor Li first. If Professor Li didn’t have any connections, he’d go to Huawei.
Rong Mu also knew about this plan. After making money from Plants vs. Zombies, he’d already started scouting for land.
However, Luo Ming and Rong Mu didn’t completely see eye to eye on this matter.
Their main point of disagreement was whether to directly purchase a supercomputer.
Luo Ming’s thinking was that the Bingzhou company would eventually become Zhuoguang’s gaming division, while the headquarters would be built in major cities like Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, or Shenzhen.
When the time came, depending on which city was chosen, they’d decide where to build Zhuoguang’s supercomputer cluster — in a nearby coastal city.
If they chose Beijing, then Tianjin for sure. If Shanghai, then Ningbo or Taizhou in Zhejiang, or even further to Weifang in Shandong.
Given the company’s current scale, buying a supercomputer was completely unnecessary.
Luo Ming’s approach was clearly better for long-term planning, but Rong Mu was especially insistent on this point — he always felt they should buy a supercomputer directly.
Rong Mu believed that buying a supercomputer now would prepare them for purchasing a supercomputer cluster later — at the very least, they’d get familiar with the procurement channels.
Rong Mu had studied computer science, after all, and knew that China’s domestic supercomputers had always been at the forefront globally — no need to buy from abroad.
But buying a supercomputer domestically at this stage wasn’t that easy either.
Rong Mu figured that getting familiar with the purchasing process now would make it easier to buy a supercomputer cluster later.
Luo Ming understood Rong Mu’s concerns, but the problem was that the company’s expansion probably wouldn’t happen until mid-2015 at the earliest. In Luo Ming’s previous timeline, it was exactly from 2015 onward that supercomputers became more accessible in terms of both purchasing channels and pricing. There was really no need to rush the purchase now.
Of course, Luo Ming couldn’t exactly use that reason to convince Rong Mu.
Generally, when neither could convince the other, Luo Ming and Rong Mu would choose to shelve the disagreement.
That’s what they did this time too.
As for supercomputers, there isn’t actually a very strict definition.
Generally speaking, supercomputers refer to computers capable of performing high-speed calculations that most personal computers can’t handle.
In other words, anything that can crush the vast majority of computers of its era can be called a supercomputer — even a particularly excellent private server could qualify.
But the supercomputer Luo Ming and Rong Mu wanted wasn’t some excellent private server — it was a true supercomputer.
And from the very beginning, neither Luo Ming nor Rong Mu had ever considered buying a supercomputer from abroad.
Because China’s supercomputers were genuinely powerful.
In 2010, China’s independently developed second-phase Tianhe-1A was successfully built. With a peak operating speed of 4.7 quadrillion calculations per second and a sustained speed of 2.566 quadrillion, this supercomputer topped the TOP500 list from the moment it was born and stayed there for many years.
And China’s lead in supercomputing didn’t start in 2010 either.
In November 1992, China’s “Galaxy-II” billion-calculation general-purpose parallel giant machine was successfully developed.
The “Galaxy-II” was used at the National Meteorological Center to establish a medium-range digital weather forecasting system, making China one of the few countries in the world capable of 5-to-7-day medium-to-long-range weather forecasting at the time.
China’s own supercomputer technology was the strongest in the world, so there was absolutely no need to beg foreigners to buy supercomputers.
In fact, before 2016, no country in the world could claim to be ahead of China in high-end supercomputer manufacturing.
However, starting from 2010, China’s high-end supercomputer direction shifted, leading some to believe that China’s leading position in high-end supercomputing no longer existed.
This was especially true after the 2021 International Supercomputing Conference (ISC) released the latest global TOP500 list, where America’s new supercomputer Frontier — which translates to “Frontier” — was rated the world’s fastest supercomputer by an absolute margin.
It was also the world’s first officially released supercomputer exceeding one quintillion floating-point operations per second, abbreviated as an exascale supercomputer.
The appearance of “Frontier” allowed the US to reclaim the world’s top spot in computing speed after a long absence.
But “Frontier’s” appearance didn’t mean we had fallen behind in this technology — it just meant everyone was developing in different directions.
After 2010, our supercomputers started taking the “accessible” route — the kind everyone could afford to use.
In Luo Ming’s previous life, around 2016, in southern provinces — especially Guangdong and Zhejiang — 71% of county towns had their own supercomputers.
In those county towns, power grid circuit analysis, traffic lights, and cameras were all controlled by supercomputers.
It’s no exaggeration to say that supercomputers were nothing rare in China — some wealthier county towns even had one per government department.
Thanks to efforts from above, the cheapest supercomputer could be had for just 700,000 yuan.
Abroad, a supercomputer with the same performance would cost over 1 million US dollars.
So whether considering price, product performance, or daily use, Luo Ming would definitely buy supercomputers domestically.
Same goes for servers, of course.
“Ring ring ring~” The sudden phone ring interrupted Luo Ming’s thoughts.
Luo Ming glanced at the caller ID and was surprised to see it was Old Huang calling.
Why would Old Huang be calling at this time?
With that thought, Luo Ming picked up. Old Huang’s voice came through the receiver: “Shuwen, am I interrupting anything?”
“No, no. Teacher Huang, what’s up?” Luo Ming asked politely.
“You probably already know about the company wanting to submit a World Cup theme song, right?”
“I know. But didn’t you already turn Manager Zhu down?”
“I didn’t say I wanted to participate. It’s just that I have a melody that’s been echoing in my head, and I’ve finally put it together.”
“Teacher Huang wants me to participate?”
“I want you to let your friend Long Ye hear this melody.”
“Oh, I see. Teacher Huang wants Long Ye to give it a try.”
“Yes. If this melody of mine can give him some inspiration, that would be wonderful.”
“Alright, I’ll ask him for you.”
“I’ll leave it to you then. I’ll send the melody to your email right now.” With that, Old Huang hung up.
“Chuchu, bring me the laptop from my room,” Luo Ming instructed.
Chen Sichu nodded and carried the laptop out.
Luo Ming opened Lin Shuwen’s email — the top unread message was from Old Huang.
Luo Ming opened it and clicked play.
“Huh? This melody…”
“Wen-jie, what about this melody?”
Luo Ming shook his head without speaking.
Actually, Luo Ming was thinking: “This melody sounds a bit like the opening of the 2010 World Cup promotional song ‘Wavin’ Flag’ — those first few bars.”
Luo Ming was what you’d call a casual fan — only watched key matches, didn’t have a favorite team or player.
Basically just watching for fun, and occasionally enjoying the sight of gamblers crying after losing their bets.
As a casual fan, World Cup theme songs were important conversation material.
Every World Cup had its own theme song and promotional song, and Luo Ming had listened to all of them.
“Wavin’ Flag” was one that left a deep impression on Luo Ming, especially those two eight-beat “oh”s at the beginning.
Catchy, powerful, and seriously earworm-worthy.
And Old Huang’s melody did bear some resemblance to those two eight-beat “oh”s.
Luo Ming’s eyes lit up instantly. Old Huang’s melody reminded him of how he felt when he first heard that song.
Looks like he had to give this a shot!
